What’s going on these days? It feels like the world is on fire, and that the divisions encouraged by extremist entrepreneurial politicians around the world are pouring gasoline on every spark, helped by “curated” and targeted social media and “news” sources that destroy even any common understanding of what’s factual and inflate opinion and perspective overobjective reality. It feels awful to watch, and yet you can’t look away.

But man, I’m really trying to. At least when I have my “investing” cap on. Anger and frustration and finger-pointing and blame can feel cathartic, but they sure won’t help our savings compound into wealth. For that, we have to put our politics and any anger we feel aside, as much as we can — you can use your money and time and energy to express your political or moral views or other opinions, and that’s certainly a healthy part of democracy, within limits, but try not to be driven by those political views or opinions or angry reactions to world events when you’re making decisions about how to manage your money. That makes you far too likely to make rash decisions at emotional highs and lows, and that’s one of the surest ways to wreck a portfolio.

We avoided the first threatened government shutdown, so there was no great opportunity for a big buyable dip in the defense or government contractor stocks before war broke out again… but then Speaker McCarthy was ousted and the Republicans can’t seem to coalesce around a new leader to get the business of government restarted, so perhaps things will get ugly again soon and scare people out of that government-dependent sector. We’ll see what happens in November, when Congress has to put more money in the meter, and the pressure is certainly on as folks watch the ongoing crises in Ukraine and Israel and wonder whether US leadership can remain relevant when we don’t really have a government operating at home.

All I can say is, it really seems extremely unlikely that defense spending will be cut… but I have no idea how our elected representatives will choose to pretend their way through the current fiscal and political mess, which seems destined to end in a shutdown in a month or so even if the House does choose a new Speaker. It’s a world of uncertainty we’re entering, and the pressure ...